Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Some tidbits from today's afternoon news conferences with Mark Richt and players...

-- Tons of talk about the seniors getting ready to play their last game at Sanford Stadium. Richt and several of the seniors talked about how much going out on a high note meant. I don't think anyone has to worry about them overlooking Kentucky with Georgia Tech on the horizon.

-- Several of the players and Mark Richt discussed the importance of locking up second place in the SEC East. It's a far cry from their preseason goals, but it's good to see they're still shooting for something.

-- Richt on Randall Cobb: "He might be the most talented player in the Southeastern Conference." Uh-oh. Timmy Tebow's gonna come knocking on Richt's door demanding an apology soon.

-- Cobb won't be the starter at QB for Kentucky. That'll go to Morgan Newton, a true freshman. Richt said he expects Cobb to be lined up at receiver, in the Wildcat and running the reverse though.

-- Richt complimented how far the Georgia running attack has come in the past few weeks and also noted Kentucky's struggles against the run. But that came with a big caveat: "There are some statistics of them maybe having some people running the ball against them relatively well, but most people that have hurt them running the ball have hurt them with the option game," Richt said. "The more traditional zone, power, sprint draw, the things that we do the most, they’ve been much more tougher and physical against those types of runs."

Richt ended that comment with this little nugget: "It makes you want to put some option in, doesn’t it?"

It was said with a sort of nod and a wink, but it might not surprise me to see a few wrinkles this week we hadn't seen before.

-- Richt said Quintin Banks would likely be the No. 3 safety this week, but that Banks wasn't likely to get the same reps that Bacarri Rambo has gotten the past few games. Instead, Reshad Jones and Bryan Evans are likely to play more.

-- Richt on the bowl scenarios for Georgia: “It seems like there is a big wad. You have two guys over here, one kind of over here and then there is a big wad. We’re in the middle of that wad, and I’d like to separate from that group if we could and convince the bowl people that we’ve done that. It’s going to be interesting.”

I'm expecting plenty of "wad" jokes in the next few days.

-- Some major kudos from Richt for senior DT Kade Weston: "I think the guy who made the most improvement from his junior year to his senior year was Kade Weston. Kade went from a guy who was a pretty good football player, a good, solid football player to a guy who really started to dominate. It all started with his offseason. That guy trimmed his body. That guy got in the best shape of his life and he changed his physique and his changed his quickness and the ability to change direction and his ability to play hard every down without the fatigue factor."

-- Richt was careful not to commit to anything on A.J. Green and Bacarri Rambo, saying that he wasn't counting either out for Georgia Tech but simply didn't have a clear idea of what their status would be.

-- An Richt was even more careful when answering the question of how much these last three games would play into his decisions of big-picture issues like the coaching staff: “I’ll say this, and it’s definitely good policy for me. It’s not the answer you want, but my main focus is Kentucky. That’s where I have to keep my mind. That’s what I have to focus on. Focusing on anything too far down the road is not healthy for me or the team, so my goal is to really make sure we are ready to play against Kentucky right now.”

-- Back to Rambo -- I spoke with Bryan Evans who said he visited Rambo in the hospital after the injury and said he was fine then. Evans said Rambo has been on campus and at the Butts-Mehre facility the past two days, laughing and joking around, showing no after effects of the concussion.

-- Richt praised the recent play of center Ben Jones, noting that while Jones has always played with a lot of emotion, he's learning to play a lot smarter. But his best synopsis of Jones is a good one: "He is like a pig in slop out there."

-- This isn't anything newsworthy, but I just thought this explanation of the challenges a running back faces in the blocking game was an awesome bit of football-speak: "If he decides he is going to try to run your little rear end over, you better be ready to hunker down and strike a blow, because good ones will lift a back out of his shoes and just plant him on the quarterback, so it’s not an easy thing to do."

-- And finally, Richt made a point of asking fans to be in the stadium early on Saturday to ensure the seniors get a proper ovation in the pregame ceremonies. I, of course, am barred from cheering in the press box, but I'll say that guys like Jeff Owens, Kade Weston, Bryan Evans, Joe Cox, Marcus Washington and Rod Battle have all been extraordinarily kind to me during the past two years, doing interviews, answering a ton of questions -- many of them about issues they probably didn't want to discuss -- and always handling themselves with a ton of class and professionalism. As a reporter, I'm not in a position to judge how much I like or dislike a player by what they do on the field. You're free to make those judgments as fans. But I can say without reservation that the seniors going out on Saturday are, by and large, a very good group of guys and definitely deserving of you getting to your seats a few minutes early to give them a big round of applause.

"When something becomes truly, sublimely ridiculous, all the cosmic forces of fate and karma will align to keep it going for as long as possible. How else do you explain...Bryan Evans' role in the Georgia secondary?...They were so bad that the universe insisted that they stay well beyond the point in which any reasonable person would have moved on. It's what I call being in the Costner Zone. You have no discernible ability and have proven repeatedly that you're an abject failure, yet you continue to get work because the general public has so much fun making fun of your failure that you absolutely must keep failing."

SECOND:"I spoke with Bryan Evans who said he visited Rambo in the hospital after the injury and said he was fine then. Evans said..."

THIRD:"I, of course, am barred from cheering in the press box, but I'll say that guys like...Bryan Evans...have all been extraordinarily kind to me during the past two years, doing interviews, answering a ton of questions -- many of them about issues they probably didn't want to discuss -- and always handling themselves with a ton of class and professionalism. As a reporter, I'm not in a position to judge how much I like or dislike a player by what they do on the field. You're free to make those judgments as fans. But I can say without reservation that the seniors going out on Saturday are, by and large, a very good group of guys and definitely deserving of you getting to your seats a few minutes early to give them a big round of applause."

Here's my point: those quotes were in chronological order. It seems out of character for you to mock Bryan Evans, then get his quote, then discuss his character in glowing terms. You may owe him an apology. Your Kevin Costner reference was too much for a Bulldog who's given a lot for the program. He must not read this blog, or else he showed a lot of restraint when you asked him about Rambo.

You're certainly welcome to your opinion, Adam. I get it. But my opinion of Evans as a worthy starting safety for Georgia and my opinion of him as a person do not have to be mutually exclusive. I think he is a good person who has worked hard. I also think he has been dramatically outplayed this season by Bacarri Rambo. As a reporter, my obligation is to tell you the latter, but I'd also prefer that not be the only picture fans get of Evans.

I agree with your comment, you can certainly like someone as a person while being critical of his performance. As a manager I often found many employees lacking in performance at work to be quality individuals on a personal basis. I still had to not retain them in some cases, not recommend them for higher positions in others.

I lived in the Northeast for a few years and found that while it had many things going for it, the one thing that offended my personal sensibilities was the cynical, cryptic way of expressing themselves. Your style reflects that in an "ESPN sort of way". I always appreciate the Southern way of slicing someone to death with them never knowing a knife was even drawn. A softer touch requires more skill, gets the job done, and doesn't offend people. I have expressed concerns about Evans' play, our defensive scheme, and our offensive style to many of my friends, none of them would have expressed surprise in me supporting any facet of UGA football this Saturday.

Your blog is one I read every day, but I do hope as you grow older your style adapts to your current locale. It is the "missing link" in your arsenal, imo.

Point taken, but I'm also not a believer in changing your voice to please an audience. I think at the end of the day, you are who you are, and if you're trying to be something else, readers will eventually see through that. Having said that, finding your voice as a writer is always an ongoing process, and you're obviously influenced by the environment you're in.

In considering it more, the joke about Bryan Evans in my picks column was perhaps something I shouldn't have written. It was meant as a joke, but I can see how it was taken to be more harsh than it was intended. And really, the criticism was leveled more at the coaching staff that has routinely kept Evans in games as the starter when he has been outplayed rather than a condemnation of Evans, himself. Either way, I probably should have avoided the joke.

I think those picks columns are written with a much different tone than I would take to most other material I'd write. I see a difference in how I present light material (like my live blogs) with more dense material, and the tone I take in writing them is adjusted accordingly.

That said, there are always going to be a few misfires. That's a risk I'm willing to take because I'd prefer that the blog have some personality to it rather than being the typical vanilla stuff you'd get in a newspaper. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Hopefully the good far outweighs the bad.

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About the Author

Seth Emerson has been covering the SEC and Georgia (on and off) since 2002. He worked at the Albany Herald from 2002-05, then spent five years at The State in Columbia, S.C., covering South Carolina. He returned to Athens in August of 2010, only to find that David Pollack and David Greene were no longer playing for the Bulldogs. Adjustments were made.

Emerson is originally from Silver Spring, Md., and graduated from Maryland in 1998 with a degree in journalism and a minor in getting lost on the way to practically everywhere. Then he spent four years at The Washington Post, covering small colleges, a couple NCAA basketball tournaments, and on one glorious day, was yelled at by Tony Kornheiser. It was probably at The Post that he also learned to write in the third person.

These days he lives in Athens with his beloved and somewhat wimpy dog, Archie. Together they fight crime at night in northeast Georgia, except on nights there is no crime, in which case they sit at home, sip on white wine and watch reruns of "Mad Men."